Really? Which whois records are needed for the internet to function? I mean whois privacy is a thing for a long time now, it just costs extra. With the new law people won't have to pay extra.
GDPR allows for the storage of personal data - as long as there is a valid reason to do so. For example, you run a repair shop and a client has brought his appliance for you to fix. You need the serial number of the appliance for warranty (not personal data) and you need the name and phone number of the client so you can contact him when the repairs are done. This is a valid reason and you are allowed to store the data as long as you need it. That is, once you give the appliance back to the client, you no longer need their name or telephone number, so you have to delete them from your database.
I haven't seen a phone book in a while (though they are still printed, probably). However, for a long time people were able to ask that their numbers be excluded from the phone book.
What is the purpose of whois though? To allow the registrars to charge extra for the privacy option?
For example - whois includes the full name of a "contact person", even if the domain belongs to a company. There is absolutely no need for it - you can have email and an office telephone number, but there is no need to publish a name.
My car does about 350km on a tank of LPG. It's not a lot and within the range of some EVs. There are two differences though: 1. As my car was modified to run on LPG, it retains the gasoline tank, so, I can switch to gasoline if the LPG runs out and there are no fuel stations nearby. 2. It takes a couple of minutes to refill the LPG tank all the way to the top. If I spend something like 10 minutes in a gas station, both fuel tanks would be full when I left (assuming no lines).
Well, then, find a better job. One that will pay more and will not be pointless.
Why should I work to pay taxes to give you money for free, which you spend to buy alcohol? At least work for your money like I do - if you have no skills whatsoever and no ability to learn then dig a hole one day and fill it up the next.
There was no welfare for healthy people in the USSR. However, everyone was guaranteed a job by the government. In fact, it was illegal to not have a job.
So, the last part is not necessary in my opinion. You are free to not work, but you won't get any money from the government for sitting on your ass whole day drinking vodka.
At least drastically reduce the welfare payments for people who own land. If you do not want to make everybody work for the money, then I agree that people, who live in the city have to buy food somehow. However, if you own land, you can work the land and grow your own food, so the government should pay you less.
But aren't companies trying to build robots that do that? If they succeed, then a lot of people will be out of work and, assuming that shoveling horse shit is not their dream job, would have no other option for work (not everybody can be a programmer).
What to do with those people then? 1. Provide some pointless job to keep them occupied (less time to drink alcohol and do drugs) and earning money. or 2. Give them some money for free or 3. Let them starve to death. or 4. Gas them
In my opinion, there should be no welfare for healthy adults. However, there should be a "universal basic job" that is available for everyone. It should have slightly fewer hours than normal and, in turn, have lower than the minimal monthly salary. It should involve doing community service or something like that, which requires little skill. Or even digging a hole one day and filling it the next day.
The idea would be that everyone who is able to work, should work. If they cannot find a job, then the government should provide them with one. It wouldn't be very desirable, but better than starving to death.
As it is currently in quite a few countries, unemployed people get paid welfare for basically sitting at home and drinking alcohol.
If the Tesla Autopilot requires clearly marked lanes it is somewhat useless. At least in my country, there are usually some streets where lanes are not marked at all, or the marking is worn away. And the street has 2 (sometimes 3) lanes in one direction.
My car pulls very slightly to the right. I do not get it fixed and one reason is that this keeps my hands on the wheel at all times. even when I am driving on a straight road. I know this and 1) can better keep attention on the road and 2) do not let go of the wheel.
Not having cruise control forces me to keep my speed in check, meaning that I have more stuff to do that is directly related to driving. If I didn't, I would get bored and my attention would slip.
This is and will always be a problem with "almost-self-driving" cars.
Humans have a variable reaction time. You can test this yourself, there are multiple sites that have a way to do it. You usually wait a few seconds until the indicator turns green and then click on a button as quickly as possible. The reaction time will be less than 500ms.
Now modify the script so it makes you wait for a random time between 1 and 15 minutes before turning the indicator green. Your reaction time will be much slower. Why is that? Well, you get bored staring at the screen for 10 minutes while doing nothing, start daydreaming etc and do not notice the green indicator.
This is the same with driving. When driving an ordinary car, you have to constantly watch the road, adjust the steering, gas etc, shift gears (if your car has a standard transmission). This give you something to do, and your reaction time to the events is faster. Tesla Autopilot and similar systems essentially turn the driver into a driving instructor for a student, who can drive quite well already. Which means that you get bored watching the road for an hour with the car driving itself perfectly fine leaving you nothing to do. After a while, you start looking around, daydreaming etc. Then a problem occurs and the car gives you 2 seconds (at most) to 1) get your alertness back, 2) familiarize yourself with the situation, 3) figure out a solution, 4) implement the solution. In such a situation, I could only slam on the brakes (figuring that whatever the problem is if I stop, the problem will be smaller). On the other hand, while driving my ordinary car, I have to always know the situation and be alert. Having to constantly adjust the car keeps me from being bored.
There is another issue and, in my opinion, more important one.
With a normal car, when I see some problem, I immediately react to it (with varying levels of success), because only I am in control of my car, not some automated system.
However, with this car, if I saw some problem, I would expect the car to deal with it (since it did so many times before) and only try to react after I noticed that the car is not going to do anything about it, at which point it will certainly be too late.
This is a lot different from trains: 1. Trains take a very long time to stop, so, a couple of lost seconds while the engineer "wakes up" and reacts is not going to be much difference. 2. The engineer is in control of the train, he does not expect the train to stop by itself automatically and only react when the train fails to do so.
Event like this was probably impossible to prevent.
Humans get bored without something to do. On a normal car, you have to constantly adjust its trajectory, speed etc which means you are concentrating on the road and if you stop doing that you will most likely end up in a ditch relatively fast (especially with an older car that does not have the various assistance systems).
Here, however, you are essentially a driving instructor. Student does all the driving and he is remarkably good at it, so, you are unable to keep that close attention to the road. But it's even worse than that. Unexpected things happen (I don't think it's the first time somebody crossed the street in front of that car) and the student always manages to deal with them correctly. So, when the unexpected thing happens again, you expect the student to deal with it too, just like in the past 100 instances. However, this time, the student is daydreaming and does not see the pedestrian. You notice that when it is too late (since you waited for the student to deal with it). Combine that with the slow reaction time from not having anything to do and you get essentially an unavoidable accident.
An ordinary car (at least an older one), forces you to pay attention or you will end up in a ditch quite fast. Also, with an ordinary car you know you (and only you) are in control, so, you see a fast approaching lamp post and you immediately stop the car or steer it away.
However, supervising a self-driving car is more like supervising a student driver: 1. Most of the time, the driver is going to drive correctly. 2. When the driver makes a mistake, you will never be able to react as quickly as if you were the driver for two reasons - a) humans cannot stare at something for hours and then be expected to have very fast reaction time if something unexpected happens* b) when you notice the approaching lamp post, you would first expect that the student will stop the car and intervene only when you are quite sure that he isn't going to do anything about it.
* you can try this yourself. There are reaction tests online where you have to click on a button after being indicated to do so. Normally you only have to wait up to 10 seconds for that to happen. Modify one such test to to make you wait from 1 second to, say, half an hour or maybe even a minute and you will see that your reaction time is going to get worse and worse because you get bored staring at the indicator.
The problem with water shortage is that it is expensive to transport water to places where the shortage is. Combine it with the fact that people in most of those places are poor and you get a problem.
It's funny to me when somebody tells me to conserve water because of the water shortage in other countries. It's not like the water I save is going to be shipped to Africa, so, the only reason to conserve water is to save my money.
Well, first of all, any game that has loot boxes should be classified for adults only by the rating system (the same as a porn game etc), which means that a minor will not be able to buy it. The parents may buy the game for their kid if they want, but then at least they will be warned ("WARNING: contains gambling with real money"). After all, a lot of games are already age restricted (violence, sex etc), so there should not be any gambling games that are rated as OK for minors.
As for a MMO with loot boxes - it should require credit card information for every transaction involving real money. A light annoyance for adults, a problem for a kid who somehow got his parents to buy the game.
1. The age and additional restrictions would apply, so children could not gamble (as children are more susceptible to gambling addiction). 2. Physical casinos pay taxes, online casinos pay taxes, why should some other online casinos (games with loot boxes) not pay taxes?
To me that sounds really annoying and like it'd give less overview to charge a few cents to my credit card every time I want something.
IMO this should be done the way prepaid cellphones work. You "fill up" your account with $20, then can buy the skins etc. However, it should not convert the $20 into star berries or whatever, so you always see the price in dollars (or euros or whatever).
in GTA you'd buy supersports cars for a few bucks
So? You are buying a virtual car for a few bucks, not a real one.
In my opinion, this should help people remember the amount of money they paid for stuff. Take a kid for example, his parents bought him 50 star berries for $20 and he spent 25 berries for some skin. It is easy to forget that the berries actually cost real money or the real price of that skin. However, if the price said $10, the kid may remember that, hey, I could buy the skin or I could eat something tasty that also costs $10.
After all, there is a reason why companies use star berries etc - to make you forget that you are paying real world money for the items.
Still, then all your in-game economics would be tied to real-world economics which would be troublesome for a virtual economy that are more complicated than you buying directly from the game company.
Why? It still is tied to the real-world economics as long as you can easily exchange real money for virtual money, especially if the price of the virtual money is fixed..
"Why do I go to the Zoo and pay $20 for myself and $10 for my kid then?"
There are probably different reasons for it.
Kids are always accompanied by adults, so the zoo still sells a full priced ticket (or two) to a family. Also, it is an incentive to go with your kid rather than leave him at home. The age cutoff for cheaper tickets is usually quite low (7 or so), so the cheaper/free ticket is also offered as a convenience for the parents (a 2 year old kid probably won't get a lot out of the visit, but you take him there when visiting the zoo with your older kid so as not to leave him alone).
All of that does not apply to online stores/services.
Is charging more even discrimination in the first place? Charging someone is still allowing them to have a service.
What if the price was based on race/religion? $10 for whites, $15 for blacks, $20 for Hispanics and if you wear a hijab, then it's $50 for you.
You could find another job, awesome. I am sure John the truck driver can do it too. The problems start when there are thousands of truck drivers looking for a new job. And thousands of other workers who were replaced by automation.
It seems that a lot of people cannot find a job right now, while the truck drivers still have their jobs.
I am sure the truck drivers and other workers who will be replaced by robots would love to not have to work as long as they had enough money.
So, pay them somewhat less than what they earn now and not require them to show up for work. That would be great. Oh, and you can get the money to do so by taxing the increased profits of companies that use the robots.
I remember this event in my country (we have paper ballots and manual counting).
Votes are coming in, this is the second round of Presidential election (meaning there are only two candidates left). Candidate A has around 60% votes, until there is some "computer trouble", no results updates for a while. When the "computer problem" is fixed, it turns out that candidate B is now winning the election with 55% or so votes.
Highway construction, at least in my country, is announced about 2km away from the actual construction, then there are progressively lower speed limit signs (90 - 70 - 50) before the construction and signs specifying how to proceed.
If there is a traffic accident that obstructs the road then I will see it from a distance (unless there is a very thick fog, but then I would be driving very slow anyway) in addition to any signs (a hazard sign must be placed at least 50 meters away from the accident and it looks completely different from an ordinary "stop" sign, in addition to the fact that it has to be put on the road, not on the side).
So yes, if I was driving on a highway and saw a normal stop sign placed on the side, with no intersection or visible road obstruction or other signs, I would most likely slow down a bit, but not stop.
It is a compromise - making the streets safe enough while at the same time not causing huge traffic jams. You could, for example, control cars like trains (only one car allowed in a "block" between two traffic lights) or airplanes (submit trip plan before driving, obey traffic control instructions etc), but it would be extremely expensive and/or would essentially stop the traffic and a democratic government that tried implementing this would not last very long.
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A lot of people use whois privacy service, even though most registrars charge extra for it.
So, the registrars can just make whois provacy the default and no extra charge. They would probably be compliant with the law.
Really? Which whois records are needed for the internet to function? I mean whois privacy is a thing for a long time now, it just costs extra. With the new law people won't have to pay extra.
GDPR allows for the storage of personal data - as long as there is a valid reason to do so. For example, you run a repair shop and a client has brought his appliance for you to fix. You need the serial number of the appliance for warranty (not personal data) and you need the name and phone number of the client so you can contact him when the repairs are done. This is a valid reason and you are allowed to store the data as long as you need it. That is, once you give the appliance back to the client, you no longer need their name or telephone number, so you have to delete them from your database.
I haven't seen a phone book in a while (though they are still printed, probably). However, for a long time people were able to ask that their numbers be excluded from the phone book.
What is the purpose of whois though? To allow the registrars to charge extra for the privacy option?
For example - whois includes the full name of a "contact person", even if the domain belongs to a company. There is absolutely no need for it - you can have email and an office telephone number, but there is no need to publish a name.
My car does about 350km on a tank of LPG. It's not a lot and within the range of some EVs. There are two differences though:
1. As my car was modified to run on LPG, it retains the gasoline tank, so, I can switch to gasoline if the LPG runs out and there are no fuel stations nearby.
2. It takes a couple of minutes to refill the LPG tank all the way to the top. If I spend something like 10 minutes in a gas station, both fuel tanks would be full when I left (assuming no lines).
Well, then, find a better job. One that will pay more and will not be pointless.
Why should I work to pay taxes to give you money for free, which you spend to buy alcohol? At least work for your money like I do - if you have no skills whatsoever and no ability to learn then dig a hole one day and fill it up the next.
There was no welfare for healthy people in the USSR. However, everyone was guaranteed a job by the government. In fact, it was illegal to not have a job.
So, the last part is not necessary in my opinion. You are free to not work, but you won't get any money from the government for sitting on your ass whole day drinking vodka.
At least drastically reduce the welfare payments for people who own land. If you do not want to make everybody work for the money, then I agree that people, who live in the city have to buy food somehow. However, if you own land, you can work the land and grow your own food, so the government should pay you less.
But aren't companies trying to build robots that do that? If they succeed, then a lot of people will be out of work and, assuming that shoveling horse shit is not their dream job, would have no other option for work (not everybody can be a programmer).
What to do with those people then?
1. Provide some pointless job to keep them occupied (less time to drink alcohol and do drugs) and earning money.
or
2. Give them some money for free
or
3. Let them starve to death.
or
4. Gas them
In my opinion, there should be no welfare for healthy adults.
However, there should be a "universal basic job" that is available for everyone. It should have slightly fewer hours than normal and, in turn, have lower than the minimal monthly salary. It should involve doing community service or something like that, which requires little skill. Or even digging a hole one day and filling it the next day.
The idea would be that everyone who is able to work, should work. If they cannot find a job, then the government should provide them with one. It wouldn't be very desirable, but better than starving to death.
As it is currently in quite a few countries, unemployed people get paid welfare for basically sitting at home and drinking alcohol.
If the Tesla Autopilot requires clearly marked lanes it is somewhat useless. At least in my country, there are usually some streets where lanes are not marked at all, or the marking is worn away. And the street has 2 (sometimes 3) lanes in one direction.
My car pulls very slightly to the right. I do not get it fixed and one reason is that this keeps my hands on the wheel at all times. even when I am driving on a straight road. I know this and 1) can better keep attention on the road and 2) do not let go of the wheel.
Not having cruise control forces me to keep my speed in check, meaning that I have more stuff to do that is directly related to driving. If I didn't, I would get bored and my attention would slip.
This is and will always be a problem with "almost-self-driving" cars.
Humans have a variable reaction time. You can test this yourself, there are multiple sites that have a way to do it. You usually wait a few seconds until the indicator turns green and then click on a button as quickly as possible. The reaction time will be less than 500ms.
Now modify the script so it makes you wait for a random time between 1 and 15 minutes before turning the indicator green. Your reaction time will be much slower. Why is that? Well, you get bored staring at the screen for 10 minutes while doing nothing, start daydreaming etc and do not notice the green indicator.
This is the same with driving. When driving an ordinary car, you have to constantly watch the road, adjust the steering, gas etc, shift gears (if your car has a standard transmission). This give you something to do, and your reaction time to the events is faster.
Tesla Autopilot and similar systems essentially turn the driver into a driving instructor for a student, who can drive quite well already. Which means that you get bored watching the road for an hour with the car driving itself perfectly fine leaving you nothing to do. After a while, you start looking around, daydreaming etc. Then a problem occurs and the car gives you 2 seconds (at most) to 1) get your alertness back, 2) familiarize yourself with the situation, 3) figure out a solution, 4) implement the solution. In such a situation, I could only slam on the brakes (figuring that whatever the problem is if I stop, the problem will be smaller). On the other hand, while driving my ordinary car, I have to always know the situation and be alert. Having to constantly adjust the car keeps me from being bored.
There is another issue and, in my opinion, more important one.
With a normal car, when I see some problem, I immediately react to it (with varying levels of success), because only I am in control of my car, not some automated system.
However, with this car, if I saw some problem, I would expect the car to deal with it (since it did so many times before) and only try to react after I noticed that the car is not going to do anything about it, at which point it will certainly be too late.
This is a lot different from trains:
1. Trains take a very long time to stop, so, a couple of lost seconds while the engineer "wakes up" and reacts is not going to be much difference.
2. The engineer is in control of the train, he does not expect the train to stop by itself automatically and only react when the train fails to do so.
Event like this was probably impossible to prevent.
Humans get bored without something to do. On a normal car, you have to constantly adjust its trajectory, speed etc which means you are concentrating on the road and if you stop doing that you will most likely end up in a ditch relatively fast (especially with an older car that does not have the various assistance systems).
Here, however, you are essentially a driving instructor. Student does all the driving and he is remarkably good at it, so, you are unable to keep that close attention to the road. But it's even worse than that. Unexpected things happen (I don't think it's the first time somebody crossed the street in front of that car) and the student always manages to deal with them correctly. So, when the unexpected thing happens again, you expect the student to deal with it too, just like in the past 100 instances. However, this time, the student is daydreaming and does not see the pedestrian. You notice that when it is too late (since you waited for the student to deal with it). Combine that with the slow reaction time from not having anything to do and you get essentially an unavoidable accident.
An ordinary car (at least an older one), forces you to pay attention or you will end up in a ditch quite fast.
Also, with an ordinary car you know you (and only you) are in control, so, you see a fast approaching lamp post and you immediately stop the car or steer it away.
However, supervising a self-driving car is more like supervising a student driver:
1. Most of the time, the driver is going to drive correctly.
2. When the driver makes a mistake, you will never be able to react as quickly as if you were the driver for two reasons -
a) humans cannot stare at something for hours and then be expected to have very fast reaction time if something unexpected happens*
b) when you notice the approaching lamp post, you would first expect that the student will stop the car and intervene only when you are quite sure that he isn't going to do anything about it.
* you can try this yourself. There are reaction tests online where you have to click on a button after being indicated to do so. Normally you only have to wait up to 10 seconds for that to happen. Modify one such test to to make you wait from 1 second to, say, half an hour or maybe even a minute and you will see that your reaction time is going to get worse and worse because you get bored staring at the indicator.
The problem with water shortage is that it is expensive to transport water to places where the shortage is. Combine it with the fact that people in most of those places are poor and you get a problem.
It's funny to me when somebody tells me to conserve water because of the water shortage in other countries. It's not like the water I save is going to be shipped to Africa, so, the only reason to conserve water is to save my money.
Awesome. I did not think I needed more reasons to keep using old cars, but got some anyway...
Well, first of all, any game that has loot boxes should be classified for adults only by the rating system (the same as a porn game etc), which means that a minor will not be able to buy it. The parents may buy the game for their kid if they want, but then at least they will be warned ("WARNING: contains gambling with real money"). After all, a lot of games are already age restricted (violence, sex etc), so there should not be any gambling games that are rated as OK for minors.
As for a MMO with loot boxes - it should require credit card information for every transaction involving real money. A light annoyance for adults, a problem for a kid who somehow got his parents to buy the game.
1. The age and additional restrictions would apply, so children could not gamble (as children are more susceptible to gambling addiction).
2. Physical casinos pay taxes, online casinos pay taxes, why should some other online casinos (games with loot boxes) not pay taxes?
To me that sounds really annoying and like it'd give less overview to charge a few cents to my credit card every time I want something.
IMO this should be done the way prepaid cellphones work. You "fill up" your account with $20, then can buy the skins etc. However, it should not convert the $20 into star berries or whatever, so you always see the price in dollars (or euros or whatever).
in GTA you'd buy supersports cars for a few bucks
So? You are buying a virtual car for a few bucks, not a real one.
In my opinion, this should help people remember the amount of money they paid for stuff. Take a kid for example, his parents bought him 50 star berries for $20 and he spent 25 berries for some skin. It is easy to forget that the berries actually cost real money or the real price of that skin. However, if the price said $10, the kid may remember that, hey, I could buy the skin or I could eat something tasty that also costs $10.
After all, there is a reason why companies use star berries etc - to make you forget that you are paying real world money for the items.
Still, then all your in-game economics would be tied to real-world economics which would be troublesome for a virtual economy that are more complicated than you buying directly from the game company.
Why? It still is tied to the real-world economics as long as you can easily exchange real money for virtual money, especially if the price of the virtual money is fixed..
"Why do I go to the Zoo and pay $20 for myself and $10 for my kid then?"
There are probably different reasons for it.
Kids are always accompanied by adults, so the zoo still sells a full priced ticket (or two) to a family. Also, it is an incentive to go with your kid rather than leave him at home. The age cutoff for cheaper tickets is usually quite low (7 or so), so the cheaper/free ticket is also offered as a convenience for the parents (a 2 year old kid probably won't get a lot out of the visit, but you take him there when visiting the zoo with your older kid so as not to leave him alone).
All of that does not apply to online stores/services.
Is charging more even discrimination in the first place? Charging someone is still allowing them to have a service.
What if the price was based on race/religion? $10 for whites, $15 for blacks, $20 for Hispanics and if you wear a hijab, then it's $50 for you.
You could find another job, awesome. I am sure John the truck driver can do it too. The problems start when there are thousands of truck drivers looking for a new job. And thousands of other workers who were replaced by automation.
It seems that a lot of people cannot find a job right now, while the truck drivers still have their jobs.
I am sure the truck drivers and other workers who will be replaced by robots would love to not have to work as long as they had enough money.
So, pay them somewhat less than what they earn now and not require them to show up for work. That would be great. Oh, and you can get the money to do so by taxing the increased profits of companies that use the robots.
I remember this event in my country (we have paper ballots and manual counting).
Votes are coming in, this is the second round of Presidential election (meaning there are only two candidates left). Candidate A has around 60% votes, until there is some "computer trouble", no results updates for a while. When the "computer problem" is fixed, it turns out that candidate B is now winning the election with 55% or so votes.
Highway construction, at least in my country, is announced about 2km away from the actual construction, then there are progressively lower speed limit signs (90 - 70 - 50) before the construction and signs specifying how to proceed.
If there is a traffic accident that obstructs the road then I will see it from a distance (unless there is a very thick fog, but then I would be driving very slow anyway) in addition to any signs (a hazard sign must be placed at least 50 meters away from the accident and it looks completely different from an ordinary "stop" sign, in addition to the fact that it has to be put on the road, not on the side).
So yes, if I was driving on a highway and saw a normal stop sign placed on the side, with no intersection or visible road obstruction or other signs, I would most likely slow down a bit, but not stop.
It is a compromise - making the streets safe enough while at the same time not causing huge traffic jams.
You could, for example, control cars like trains (only one car allowed in a "block" between two traffic lights) or airplanes (submit trip plan before driving, obey traffic control instructions etc), but it would be extremely expensive and/or would essentially stop the traffic and a democratic government that tried implementing this would not last very long.